Our Quebec books of the year

Quebec’s literary year has been a prosperous one. Our two journalists present you with readings that marked them in 2021.

Dominic Tardif
Press

After Celeste, Maude Nepveu-Villeneuve

Although there is a question of perinatal bereavement, After Celeste is less of a book about losing a child and more about what to leave behind as you enter adulthood. An ode to the consoling power of female friendship, the third novel by this little-celebrated writer shines with her bittersweet humor, her formidably sharp sentences and the tenderness in which her characters are sculpted. A book that comforts, without promising a future free from sadness, but soberly showing that there is still light, even after the worst.

Editions of your mother, 160 pages

A thousand secrets, a thousand dangers, Alain Farah

“The truth is that we do not choose the images that haunt us and make us”, observes Alain Farah in this third novel, inventory of the pains – of exile, of childhood, of the body – that he carries while he goes to Saint Joseph’s Oratory, where he must marry the woman he loves. A thousand secrets, a thousand dangers is nothing less than a narrative tour de force, in which the author has the elegant wisdom not to draw attention to his own virtuosity, but to his story. His cousin Édouard had long suggested that he write a book in which he would tell – tell himself – simply. We have to admit that the fool was right.

Le Quartanier, 512 pages

Mukbang, Fanie Demeule

In this dystopian-alimentary thriller, Fanie Demeule refines an art of the novel consisting in luring its readership with the help of a seemingly banal primer, before letting the relentless trap of a distorting mirror close in on it, set in our era. Grotesque fable about the nightmarish factory that is the internet, Mukbang speaks of the exhilarating and calming power of likes, while avoiding the trap of a final condemnation of social networks. The author of Natural light red Above all, it probes this inalienably human desire, almost dangerous, to exist in the eyes of others, no matter what one has to inflict on oneself.

Head First, 232 pages

The daughter of herself, Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay

First francophone autofiction written by a trans woman in Quebec, The daughter of herself is for this reason alone an event in the history of our literature. But it is also a great novel, a chiaroscuro poetry, at the heart of which the confused euphoria of self-discovery meets the violence of a world which still ignores everything about transidentity. Without exonerating those who perpetuate the stupidity of ostracism, Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay chooses to believe that the other is capable of the best, even though she knows full well that he is capable of the worst. It thus does useful work and offers a new example to the adage according to which it is in what is unique that stories find their universality.

Leaf merchant, 344 pages

The thief, Daria Colonna

“My father’s despair is clarity,” writes Daria Colonna. She could not better summarize the tension which crosses this poetic tale, in which a woman tries to free herself from the deleterious legacy of her parents, while realizing little by little that she will never be able to completely get rid of it. A book full of heady flashes and salutary revolts, in which joy and melancholy are cousins, The thief testifies to the tortuous complexity of class relations and recalls that even when everything conspires to our despair, there is always the refuge of night, friendship and literature.

Bush poets, 256 pages

Iris Gagnon-Paradis
Press

Everything is ori, Paul Serge Forest

“Wow! »It is with this interjection that we begin our review of this completely hallucinating and highly original novel, winner of the 2021 Robert-Cliche Prize. Taking place on the North Shore, region of origin of the author, doctor by profession ( Paul Serge Forest is his pseudonym), Everything is ori mixes stories of fishing, love of mollusks, carnal pleasures and burning obsessions, as well as an intriguing new color that dazzles all who look at it, in a completely absurd tale filled with eccentric and colorful characters.

VLB editor, 456 pages

Final painting of love, Larry Tremblay

Freely inspired by the life and work of Francis Bacon, this burning and enjoyable story is absolutely magnetic. Larry Tremblay reveals himself at the height of his art. He is interested in the toxic and tragic relationship between the painter and George Dyer, who will become the tormented model of an artist who seeks to pierce the real and turn the flesh raw on his canvases. Or when pleasure and pain intertwine for a dance that is as beautiful as it is macabre.

La Peuplade, 216 pages

Valid, Chris Bergeron

Valid garnered attention as one of the first Quebec novels written by a trans person, and also features a trans main character, Christian / Christelle. But this identity thriller is much more than that. Between autofiction and science fiction, the vice-president at Cossette offers a brilliant and breathtaking novel, set in a dystopian future controlled by artificial intelligence and in a Montreal transfigured by the health and climate crises. To win against the machine, the character will have to face his own inner demons.

XYZ, 272 pages

High demolition, Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard

With a squeaky, sarcastic and raw tone, this novel lifts the veil on the middle of the humor, and what it highlights is far from rosy. We follow a young comedian in full rise and living very badly the break with his ex, who is in fact the narrator of this story, written in the “you” and in the future – a daring choice. It is a novel which devours itself, and which knows how to dive under the surface of things, where our insecurities, our pettiness and our paradoxes swarm.

Your mother’s editions, 357 pages

Bivouac, Gabrielle Filteau-Chiba

It is beautiful, and meaningful, the work that Gabrielle Filteau-Chiba constructs. With this third opus which reconnects with the same characters as her previous ones, she pushes her reflection further while sensitively on the relationship between man and nature, and knows how to move us while making us aware. The story here revolves around a group of environmental activists who will do anything to stop a pipeline project, but is also – and above all – a touching story of mutual aid and love, beyond our differences.

XYZ, 384 pages